Remote Work Digest: June 26, 2015

Creating a cozy and productive work space that will help you stay on task is a must. Here are Dianna Labrien’s 4 effective tips to create to the perfect working environment:

1. Choose the right space
Keep a boundary within your home where work begins and ends. If you have the luxury of choosing your work space, it should be maintained as distinct from other rooms as possible. Make sure that distractions like game consoles, personal books, and other things that are non-work related are eliminated. Give it the real importance it deserves, set up your office at a more convenient area of your house.

2. You can never have too much storage space
Even when you work in tech, you can’t avoid having papers around. Invest in at least one four-shelf bookcase that can hold dozens of folders, books, and paper periodicals you still read. Organization is key to maintaining a good working environment.

3. Choose the right tools and support
Having a great work from home set up doesn’t assure you that your work flow will always go smoothly. Make sure that you have that you have the number of the most convenient local IT provider to cover your tech needs.

4. Lighting is crucial
The kind of light source you put in your work area will not only affect the quality of your work but the also your health. If you spend most of the time staring at your scree, f.lux should become your best friend. Aside from automatically adjusting your display colors and contrast depending on the time of the day to keep your eyes less stressed, it also helps you wind down easier by eliminating the blue light of your screen in case you’re working till late.

Keeping employees both happy and productive requires more thought and effort than most think. With all the articles on the internet regarding remote work productivity, you’ll read the employees who work remotely are happier and more satisfied due to less commute and more flexibility.

Here are the building blocks for a productive remote work set up according to Edsel Mendoza:

1. Over communication

According to Walter Chen of iDoneThis, “A virtual team must use a number of different tech tools to facilitate those varied employee relationships and interactions. This requires deliberate thought on how the team needs to communicate.”

Sqwiggle and Speek are among the communication tools that can integrate smoothly into your common work habits.

2. Effective asynchronous working

Working towards a common goal can be challenging when your distributed team is working in a different time zone. Using collaboration tools meant for teams, like Nozbe and Campfire, to simultaneously work on projects are great for working asynchronously.

3. Progress tracking

The best tools for tracking productivity focus less on your laundry list and more on your accomplishments. Edsel suggests we check out Yesware, a lightweight plug in that tracks email activity, and iDoneThis, a great way to keep the team updated on everyone’s progress.

Telecommuting is rising, no one will argue with that. According to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 38% of employees has offered the benefit in 2014 – an increase of 23% since 2008. Also, more companies began offering telecommuting in 2014 than any other benefit.

Telecommuting offers benefits for both employee and employers, including:

Improved employee satisfaction

Increased productivity

Cost savings

Flexibility

Although working from home sounds like a great idea, there are a variety of challenges we need to address in order for us to enjoy the advantages that come with it. Telecommuting can isolate you and that may not be a good attribute for productivity. It can also present too many distractions. The need for employers to be connected and working during the business hours should be explicit. However, using the right tools and understanding the nature of telecommuting can help you overcome the drawbacks that come with it.

Creating a strong company culture can be difficult when you’re managing a remote team. One of the biggest reasons why virtual teams fail is because they don’t communicate or collaborate as much as they need to. However, according to David Hassell, asking the right questions at the right cadence builds structure and team cohesion and turns your imaginary office into something tangible.

Here are 10 questions designed to help you support your remote team to do their best:

Who on the team would you like to get to know better?
What do you think could help us to improve daily communication?
How have you improved your remote working skills this month?
What value do you get out of the daily/weekly call? How would you feel if we held it less frequently?
How’s the morale in your virtual office? What challenges are you facing?
Are you out of the office or traveling in the near future?
What has communication been like with team leaders, managers, and directors?
What are your primary goals this quarter?
Would any additional training be helpful?
What has become harder and easier in our work and business?
Communicating effectively and knowing the right questions to ask will help you keep your remote team focused on achieving company goals.

Delegation is an essential leadership skill, and delegating to a virtual workforce is especially challenging. Here are some valuable tips on how to handle virtual delegation from Reputation Central, a fully decentralized business with remote workers around the world.

Understand Your Process

The key to assigning a task to someone is to fully understand what you are asking them to do. “Even with a proper structure in place, you’d be surprised how many people will wait until halfway through a project to admit that they don’t understand something,” says Dave Davis of Redfly Marketing. “Rigorously testing the knowledge of a particular individual or team’s task at hand in an informal way at the beginning of a project can quite literally save a project.”

Match the Communication Tool to the Task

Know when to use instant messaging versus email versus a phone call or a face-to-face meeting. There are times when a phone call or face-to-face meeting is better. According to a recent survey by online project management comparison firm Software Advice, 38% of respondents cited communication as the key issue when working within a virtual team.

Don’t Skimp on Background

In order to create a chain of communication that everyone can reference, you must document everything. Using project management tools like Basecamp will allow you to upload emails, documents and other files that everyone can access when needed. John Jonas, owner of Replacemyself.com and Onlinejobs.ph, recommends having the digital equivalent of an office whiteboard accessible to keep the team on track.

Break Up Projects

If you’ve got a full team, share the load. Being flexible with tasks and who can do them ensures your business is ready to pivot if something changes.